


Life After Destruction (It's Pretty Cool)

by sellswordking



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-20 12:23:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sellswordking/pseuds/sellswordking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How did stuff get weirder <i>after</i> the kaiju were gone?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How It Starts

How Hanibal managed to track him down, Newt had _no_ idea.

Until, that is, he remembered that the man was head of an international black market that was resourceful enough to twist the arm of the military into allowing him free range over Kaiju bits in exchange for funds to . . . well, end his business. Then, _yeah_ , he had a pretty good idea.

The guy just _stormed_ into the lab Newt had been set up in after the mission was a success, something about invaluable help and compensation for being nearly (soon to be **fully** but Newt didn't like thinking about phrases like _rapid degeneration_ and _permanent tissue damage_ , it bummed him out) blinded in one eye  _getting_ the help. Stormed right in! Like he owned the place or something! Newt had the idea to call someone until he remembered all the emergency services were still tied up in the reconstruction and it wasn't very likely that anyone who survived in the Shatterdome (coolest name _ever_ , his lab was totally privately referred to as _Shatterdome II_ ) would come help, so it was just Newt and a psychopath alone in his lab.

_God, please, let it at least be an attractive corpse._

Before Newt could even open his mouth to scream like an unfortunate boy in his early teens, Hannibal broke the suffocating ice.

" _Where_ is my _goddamn shoe_?" Each word was gritted through a golden mouth piece, and for one hysterical second Newt thought he was just a ghost and almost took off his own shoe to offer just to get him to disappear. Then he remembered, his big giant mondo brain that helped defeat the biggest threat Earth had ever seen in the form of gigantic _monsters_ from bedtime stories realized, idiot, _his shoe_! Hannibal's gold-tipped ridiculous shoe that Newt kept for SOME REASON because hey, guy gets eaten the logical thing is to totally take his shoe, right? Absolutely.

Ahhh, he is so dead.

Hannibal sees it. Why does he see it you might wonder? Because Newt is a _genius_ with bouts of absolute stupidity and was keeping it in his lab on top of a tank with a live parasite in it like some sort of weird fetish-y trophy.

. . . Okay so Hermann was still calling the _parasite_ a groupie souvenir but he could shove his cane up his ass sideways and shut up alright, because it mostly wasn't true.

Still shut up.

Hannibal snatched his shoe off the tank and turned on one perfect Italian boot heel to round on Newt who had started saying his prayers and hoping his programme would still delete his internet history and hard drive after 24 hours of inactivity. A rough poke against the middle of his chest snaps him out of the fifth hail mary Tendo taught him a few years back.

"You're taking me to dinner, make up for having to drag my ass out here and find _this_." Hannibal poked him again with the tip of the offending ' _this_ ', hard enough to push him back a step. "Don't try to cheap out, I know what kind of money you got now. Maybe I'll even help with that eye problem."

In a sweep of red and black and garish style, Hannibal was out the door.

It took fifteen seconds for Newt to rub the pain from his chest at being abused with bad footwear.

Another two minutes for him to realize he somehow _wasn't_ being hacked up into little pieces and sold to some freak on the black market, and he was so relieved, Newt asked the bossman for the rest of the day off. (He was the bossman. The answer was a stern 'be in early tomorrow to finish the hydrocephalic experiment in four'. Again shut up, it's lonely when Hermann goes off to conferences and leaves him for weeks at a time.)

At four in the morning, covered in sweat, Newt vaulted upright and realized finally, "Was I bullied _into_ a date?!"

Even geniuses miss the glaringly obvious sometimes.


	2. Unhelpful Asides

“Well, from what I can gather,” Hermann started with his lips all thin and pressed tight, his face pinched up like he thought he was Newt’s mother and _why_ exactly did he think he wanted the guy back sooner than planned again? Because it _certainly_ couldn’t be for all the help that Hermann **wasn’t**. “Hannibal Chau, a _dangerous criminal_ , not only was allowed into our laboratory--which I remind you is filled with _sensitive information_ , Newton!--and left with his property that I told you a hundred times to throw out. Not only that, but with your--your _acquiescence_ to this . . . _date_.” He spat out the word like it was kaiju blood, afraid for what the residual effect would do to his tongue.

Newt threw his hands up and tried to keep from pacing--it would only wrinkle his shirt even more. “Jesus, Hermann, I just want some--I don’t know, advice! _Help_!”

“Marshall Pentecost told you specifically not to trust him! _That_ is my advice.” Hermann gesticulated with his cane, as if he was still giving a lecture to people way below his own intelligence. Which, given that Newt told him he was going to go through with this whole thing involving Hannibal, he might have been. “Call _someone_ , get protection for yourself and tell him to stay _far_ away from you and our place of business.”

It was sound advice, sure, but the problem was that Newt didn’t . . . exactly _want_ that?

Not that Hermann wasn't--and he would  _never_ admit it out loud--100% right, Hannibal was dangerous and he was untrustworthy and he had totally tried to get Newt  _eaten_ (no that hadn't been forgotten!) but . . . there was just something  _about_ him, how he just . . .

Well, that was why Newt needed advice from literally anyone! He didn't  _know_ , he couldn't finish the thought--for the first time in his life he didn't  _know_ what to think and it was driving him crazy! So he asked Hermann to come back early and help him, but  _that_ obviously wasn't going how he envisioned.

"Look, he said he can help me. My eye." That was the other thing. Beyond just a dinner, if Hannibal even  _could_ help where both of them had fallen short so far, Newt wasn't going to back away with his tail between his legs. "It's been hurting more lately, and I-I think things are starting to  _fade_ , and we haven't been able to crack anything. Who better than the guy who thought to do it first--"

Hermann grabbed Newt by the shoulders, the wood of his polished cane digging into Newt's skin and forcing his mouth shut mid-ramble. Rare occurance, but if anyone could get him to do it, it'd be Hermann. " _We_ will find out how to stop the pain, Newton, just give us more  _time_. I won't let you lose _any_ of your sight, I promise." His entire body was trembling and Newt could feel a punch of fear in his gut that he wasn't sure was enitrely his own. There was a problem with coming to Hermann, one that neither of them had talked about since they shared the drift.

"Are you saying that because you think we can, or because you don't want me going on a _date_?" It was time they faced this little problem, the one where Hermann had kind of fallen for Newt after all their hours spent cramped together in a lab, trying to save the world. Hermann was too stuffy and  _British_ (despite the fact that they  _both_ came from Germany, Newt knew, had seen in his head, that Hermann was raised no more German than Newt had been) to bring it up and the way all the color from his desperation and anger drained out of him, he didn't think Newt ever would either.

Because they had been inside one another's heads, and Newt knew what Hermann felt for him just like Hermann knew that the feeling was decidedly  _not_  mutual.

Except maybe it came out worse than Newt meant it to, maybe there was a little snap to the question because Hermann stopped touching him altogether and looked like his dog had just been run over. Newt wanted to apologize, but before he could, Hermann was spun around and awkwardly trying to make a break for it.

Over his shoulder, Hermann bitterly called, "Do what you like,  _Doctor Geizsler_ , but remember that  _shortcuts_ are what put you in this position in the first place!"

The door slammed behind him and Newt collapsed into his chair, giving up on keeping the wrinkles from his shirt.

_Shit_.

"Well, so much for a second opinion."


	3. What Did You Expect?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some musing, some angsting, and some smartassing before the date.

In the pit of his stomach, Newt could feel sharp stabs of worry like he was suddenly part of a drop and it felt like his guts were flipping over. The problem was that it wasn't _his_  worry. These weren't his emotions, he wasn't alone in his own head anymore. Of course he knew that could happen, and when he was just drifting with a kaiju it hadn't been something he had to worry about. But a  _person_?  _Especially_  Hermann?

How could this not be a problem? How could he not have seen--well, okay so at the time he was a little preoccupied with the whole 'saving the world' thing and all he could feel was relieved and touched because he thought Hermann didn't even  _like_  him.

God, how wrong that was. Newt was never--no one had ever  _flattered_  him like Hermann. All the sudden he knew what it was like to see himself through eyes that looked at him with warmth and all this  _feeling_  that Newt didn't even think was possible to even have all at once! There was pride and affection and worry and frustration and it was weird that Hermann hadn't exploded from all the stuff in his head. It lingered, always there, in the back of Newt's head but would burst to the fore when they were working together and close enough that the misfiring synapses of their brains thought they were still connected.

Thus the problem.

Newt couldn't have someone else in his head--didn't wanna subject anyone to that, not even Hermann. Especially not now.

He was gonna go meet Hannibal for dinner. They were probably going to have sex, possibly in public. Hermann would know the second it happened and while he still thought he had something more than lust for Newt, it was going to break his heart.

"How  _dare_  that pretentious little man make me care about him." Newt sighed, letting his head slump down to the desk.

He needed reinforcements. He needed to talk to a jeager pilot.

The computer buzzed to life as Newt set about seeing where the hell Raleigh was.

_

It had taken over three hours for Newt to figure out that he wasn’t going to find Raleigh, and he was going to find an ass kicking because Hannibal Chau didn’t just accept ‘sorry I got caught up’ as an excuse. Or anything less than ‘he died in a horrible accident on the way here’.

. . . Actually, even then Newt was pretty sure Hannibal would find his corpse just to desecrate it. Possibly sexually. It was something to keep in mind if things went bad, he should probably text Hermann and tell him--shit.

Being reminded of the whole Hermann thing (was it even possible to be reminding of something you literally never stop thinking about?) was like having his throat slowly cut with a guitar string.

Waves of guilt and pain so crippling it almost felt physical washed through Newt. He shouldn’t have let Hermann run out like that, he should’ve gone after him and apologized. It wasn’t like dropping entrails on his side of the lab or the one time he kinda accidentally melted Hermann’s glasses while trying to show him the interesting effect kaiju enzymes had on warping the color of metal (he had no idea what they would do to the trivex of the lense!), this wasn’t just irritation that had always held an undercurrent of endearment--he had _really_  fucked things up between them. He had genuinely hurt Hermann this time, and he hadn’t done anything to fix it. Not a cup of tea, not a finally finished report. Nothing.

Newt was starting to think he should call this whole thing off, go back and find Hermann, and try to work . . . whatever this was out.

“Oh,  _no_. You’re walking up to me already looking like shit?” Hannibal popped the bubble around Newt’s brain that had given him any hope of turning around. He was cut out of pure silk dyed a deep blue, waistcoat black as sin underneath and a lighter blue shirt with white pinstripes under that. His tie was gold-colored, to match those shoes that had started this, all illuminated under finely re-erected street lamps. The part of the city they were in had been first in the re-renovations, dubbed by Newt to be the ‘expensive’ side of town, and Hannibal looked every bit like he belonged there.

After taking a moment to feel woefully under-dressed (Newt didn’t dress up, the best he had done was a mostly clean and totally kaiju-fluid free white button up and light colored skinny jeans.) Newt choked out a little of his wide vocabulary. “Well, I didn’t wanna be here but you kinda threatened me, so . . .”

Hannibal’s mouth slashed open to a golden smirk, like the Cheshire cat but in some really weird 1999 version of the story. Newt blinked away the thought.

“Unless you want me to pull out my knife and show you a  _real_  threat, I suggest you show me to the Goddamn restaurant you picked.”

Newt couldn’t really argue with that.


	4. Joke's On You, I Never Liked Dignity Anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things do tend to fall apart quickly, don't they?

“You said you could help!” Newt swung his legs from the car and managed to get half way down the street before Hannibal caught him by the back of the neck.

Dinner, while good (and a hefty chunk of change) had been a disaster. Hannibal needled him for classified information, then tormented him with promises of large parts of the mostly in-tact kaiju fetus to study. The worst thing about Hannibal was also the best thing; he was _smart_ , and he knew exactly where to stroke Newt’s intellect to nearly bring him into forgetting the consequences of divulging government classified information even in a post-kaiju world.

Hell, especially _now_ \--didn’t need some nutjob trying to build their own kaiju or something.

They had argued the entire time, and finally Hannibal got Newt into his damn car just to have a "better look" at his eye and say there was nothing he could do. _That_ had set Newt off. At least before it had been sort of like sparring, except Hannibal couldn’t offer back a good argument, just brawny threats or sweet blackmarket promises to grease the wheels. _Now_ , however, Newt just wanted to get the hell away from him, find Raleigh, and promise the pilot no rest until he spilled the secret of how to get Hermann out of his head because the gradual worry eating away at his brain was starting to kill him.

Hannibal corralled him into an alley, giving them some privacy should the street not remain all but deserted. “Impossible concept, but I’m sure a geek like you can puzzle it out.” He hissed, shadows falling over him until even his white hair looked dark. “I _lied_.”

“Yeah, no shit! I kinda figured that out!” Newt squirmed against the rough brick, wincing when he felt it scrape and tug at his shirt like it was seconds away from ripping one of the few good articles of clothing he had. “I’m not gonna give you anything, and you’re sure as hell not giving me anything so let’s just call this night now. I’ll be busy criminal-proofing the lab tomorrow.” Even backed against a literal wall, Newt never could keep his mouth in check.

Suddenly he realized that Hannibal was at least five inches taller than him and when he leaned down and grinned it was like staring down Otachi’s bioluminescent tentacles--not in terms of fear, but the impending danger that paralyzed Newt and made his blood boil all at once. His entire body shook when he felt Hannibal’s golden plates brush down his jaw to trail to his ear.

“I’ve got something to give you, kid.” It was like cheap porn that used to come through on Newt’s old TV when his parents were asleep in the other room, he should have laughed in Hannibal’s face to hear it coming from his mouth like Rico Suave. Except Newt was getting hard and Hannibal knew it, because it had been ten goddamn years and suddenly for all of his posturing about the possibility of sex with Hannibal Chau, he realized he hadn’t actually expected to _have sex_ with Hannibal Chau.

_

Newt limped back to his room with his brain still trying desperately to reconnect.

They didn’t even leave the alley the first time. Hannibal had ripped down Newt’s jeans just enough and hoisted his legs up until they were bent almost to his chest. There would be scratches all over his back where the brick had ripped his shirt as he was fucked up against it, each thrust hitting deep until he could feel the ache of every impact in his stomach, like Hannibal had ripped the pleasure from Newt with his cock alone. It was only biting his wrist that had stopped Newt from screaming loud enough to attract every bum and addict wandering the streets to watch the show.

It was presumptuous of Hannibal to bring lube out with him, and Newt thanked every star in the sky that he was a bastard because it wasn’t like they wasted time with something sappy like foreplay. Hannibal had been eager to give it and Newt had demanded more the second he got a taste.

In the car, dripping come and blood, Newt had ripped off Hannibal’s stupid goggles and yanked him down until he chuckled and consented to blowing him. Newt didn’t hold back for the driver’s sake, shrieking his second orgasm with no indication to whether he was getting off from having his dick sucked or having it sucked by one of the most powerful men on the wrong side of the law.

At Hannibal’s ‘safe house’, they had gone at it twice more, until Newt had come three more times and was too exhausted to leave, and Hannibal had been impressed with him.

( _“Jesus, buddy. I knew you were wet for it but I didn’t think you’d need it that much.” Hannibal lit his cigar and chuckled._

_Newt’s leg spasmed in a phantom pain he shouldn’t be feeling. “Haven’t been fucked in ten years.” He finally slurred into the silken pillow. Hannibal didn’t do anything halfway._

_“No shit?” The older man sounded as if it was an impossible theory._

_Through a yawn, Newt nodded._

_“Saving the world. Rooming near Hermann. No time.” Christ, he couldn’t even be fucked out without thinking of Hermann._ )

He had been dropped at the lab entrance twenty minutes after the sun came up and his long walk of shame to his room in bloody, filthy clothes reeking of sex Hannibal hadn’t allowed him to wash off was more a pathetic stumble.

Just before leaving the actual laboratory, he looked at Hermann's work station. It was pristine, but not the kind that said it had been impeccably cleaned after a day of work. No, it hadn't been touched at all because Hermann hadn't even come back to the lab. Getting the sense fucked out of him had made his brain go dark, thankfully, but Newt didn't exactly need a neural link to know what Hermann was feeling.

For the first time since he bought the place, Newt was glad that Hermann had decided against staying in the spare room next to Newt's. At the time, he hadn't seen the logic in getting an  _apartment_ because sharing a work space for them was like sharing a home anyway and why pay rent when you could just buy what was basically the coolest house ever that happened to have powerful equipment for performing dangerous and possibly life saving experiments? Now, though, he was glad for it.

Newt kept walking until he could collapse in his bed, knowing full well the sheets would have to be  _burned_ because there was no way in hell they would ever come clean.

At least he wouldn't have to deal with  _that_ first thing in the morning.


End file.
